• Summary:
The article recounts the Origins of Indwe, located in the
northwestern Cape, as a planned company town. In the
development of the town, conflict over land, influx of capital
and the mining of coal all played a part between 1880 and
1896. The town itself was laid out for the Indwe Railway,
Collieries and Land Company by a surveyor named E. Gilbert
Hall. The decline of the coal mines left Indwe a small and
declining town, but its history allows a number of themes to be
explored which are significant in the history of planning in
South Africa.